'Cosmos' dazzles in debut

Astronomers have discovered powerful auroras on a brown dwarf that is 20 light-years away. This is an artist's concept of the phenomenon.

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Venus, bottom, and Jupiter shine brightly above Matthews, North Carolina, on Monday, June 29. The apparent close encounter, called a conjunction, has been giving a dazzling display in the summer sky. Although the two planets appear to be close together, in reality they are millions of miles apart.

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Jupiter's icy moon Europa may be the best place in the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life, according to NASA. The moon is about the size of Earth's moon, and there is evidence it has an ocean beneath its frozen crust that may hold twice as much water as Earth. NASA's 2016 budget includes a request for $30 million to plan a mission to investigate Europa. The image above was taken by the Galileo spacecraft on November 25, 1999. It's a 12-frame mosaic and is considered the the best image yet of the side of Europa that faces Jupiter.

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This nebula, or cloud of gas and dust, is called RCW 34 or Gum 19. The brightest areas you can see are where the gas is being heated by young stars. Eventually the gas burst outward like champagne after a bottle is uncorked. Scientists call this champagne flow. This new image of the nebula was captured by the European Space Organization's Very Large Telescope in Chile. RCW 34 is in the constellation Vela in the southern sky. The name means "sails of a ship" in Latin.

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The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of Jupiter's three great moons -- Io, Callisto, and Europa -- passing by at once.

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An artist's impression of what a black hole might look like. Researchers in China said they spotted a supermassive black hole 12 billion times the size of the sun.

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A massive galaxy cluster known as SDSS J1038+4849 looks like a smiley face in an image captured by the Hubble Telescope. The two glowing eyes are actually two distant galaxies. And what of the smile and the round face? That's a result of what astronomers call "strong gravitational lensing." That happens because the gravitational pull between the two galaxy clusters is so strong it distorts time and space around them.

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Using powerful optics, astronomers have found a planet-like body, J1407b, with rings 200 times the size of Saturn's. This is an artist's depiction of the rings of planet J1407b, which are eclipsing a star.

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A patch of stars appears to be missing in this image from the La Silla Observatory in Chile. But the stars are actually still there behind a cloud of gas and dust called Lynds Dark Nebula 483. The cloud is about 700 light years from Earth in the constellation Serpens (The Serpent).

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This is the largest Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled. It's a portion of the galaxy next door, Andromeda (M31).

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NASA has captured a stunning new image of the so-called "Pillars of Creation," one of the space agency's most iconic discoveries. The giant columns of cold gas, in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, were popularized by a similar image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.

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Astronomers using the Hubble Space pieced together this picture that shows a small section of space in the southern-hemisphere constellation Fornax. Within this deep-space image are 10,000 galaxies, going back in time as far as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

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Planetary nebula Abell 33 appears ring-like in this image, taken using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The blue bubble was created when an aging star shed its outer layers and a star in the foreground happened to align with it to create a "diamond engagement ring" effect.

NASA's NuSTAR telescope array generated the first map of radioactivity in the remnants of an exploding star, or supernova. Blue in this image of Cassiopeia A represents radioactive material.

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A supernova was spotted on January 21 in Messier 82, one of the nearest big galaxies. This wide view image was taken on January 22.

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The M82 supernova, seen here, has been designated SN2014J because it is the 10th supernova detected in 2014. At 11.4 million light years from Earth, it is the closest Type Ia supernova recorded since systematic studies with telescopes began in the 1930s.

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Is that a giant hand waving at us? Actually, it's what's left of a star that died and exploded a long time ago. Astronomers nicknamed it the "Hand of God." NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, took this image in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue. The image was combined with images from another space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, one of the largest and closest galaxies of its kind. The center of the galaxy is mysterious, researchers say, because it has a double nucleus -- a supermassive black hole that may be ringed by a lopsided disc of stars, giving it the appearance of a dual core.

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Hubble scientists say this is the best-ever view of the Tarantula Nebula, which is located in one of our closest galactic neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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Those spots on our sun appear small, but even a moderate-sized spot is about as big as Earth. They occur when strong magnetic fields poke through the sun's surface and let the area cool in comparison to the surrounding area.

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This Hubble image looks a floating marble or a maybe a giant, disembodied eye. But it's actually a nebula with a giant star at its center. Scientists think the star used to be 20 times more massive than our sun, but it's dying and is destined to go supernova.

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Story highlights

"Cosmos" premiered on Fox Sunday night

New series is a new version of popular 1980 PBS show with Carl Sagan

"Cosmos" hosted by astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson

A goal: Present science with "glory and majesty and wonder"

The "ship of the imagination" is roaring ahead into its second voyage.

"Cosmos," the new, updated version of Carl Sagan's popular 1980 documentary series exploring the hows, whats and whys of the universe, premiered Sunday night on Fox, the National Geographic Channel and various corporate cousins.

Its "ship of the imagination" -- a vehicle to take viewers through wonders large and small -- now has a new captain, astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, but the reaction to the show's debut shows that entertaining, informative science never goes out of style.

"Tonally the show strikes just the right balance between education and inspiration," wrote The Verge's Bryan Bishop, though adding that he believed the premiere tried too hard.

"It feels like it's missing its own point: that the greatest wonders aren't CG (computer generated) spectacle, but our own marvelous universe," he wrote.

Science fans -- and fans of the original series -- have been awaiting the new "Cosmos" for months. The show has the imprimatur of Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, and is being produced by "Family Guy" mogul Seth MacFarlane, an avowed "Cosmos" geek.

Through it all, Tyson has maintained his good humor as he's promoted the show.

Photos: Never-seen images of the cosmos 8 photos

Photos: Never-seen images of the cosmos8 photos

Never-seen images of the cosmos – In honor of American Archives Month, NASA has released a selection of eight never-before-seen images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a telescope in space. This image is of a galaxy, NGC 4945, that is about 13 million light years away from Earth. It looks like the Milky Way, but it contains a supermassive black hole within the white area near the top of the image.

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – When radiation and winds from massive young stars impact clouds of cool gas, they can trigger new generations of stars to form. This is what might be happening in this object, known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula.

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – This galactic supernova remnant, known as 3C397, has an unusual box-like shape. Researchers think that is because the heated remains of the exploded star are running into cooler gas.

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – This supernova was likely produced by the collapse of a star's central core.

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – This region of glowing gas, in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way, is about 9,000 light years from Earth.

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – In the past century, eight supernovas have been observed in the arms of NGC 6946, a galaxy about 22 million light years away from Earth. NGC 6946 is also nicknamed the "Fireworks Galaxy."

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – This image was produced by the explosion of a massive star in the Milky Way.

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Never-seen images of the cosmos – Giant plumes of radiation are seen near galaxy 3C353, the tiny point at the center of this image.

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EXPAND GALLERY

"The universe is hilarious!" he told GQ in a recent interview. "Like, Venus is 900 degrees. I could tell you it melts lead. But that's not as fun as saying, 'You can cook a pizza on the windowsill in 9 seconds.' And next time my fans eat pizza, they're thinking of Venus!"

"One of our mission statements in 'Cosmos' is to present science with all of its glory and the majesty and the mystery and the wonder -- the things we all take for granted as children," Tyson said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources."

Tyson acknowledged that he's bothered about the debate between science and religion that's became a mainstay of political campaigns and op-ed pages.

"There was a time when science and religion kind of co-existed under the same roof," Tyson told Stelter. "I find it odd that we live in a time where people who are strongly religious want to make everyone else the same kind of religious way they are, and break down the door of the science classroom to put their religious philosophies in there."

Though there was some tweaking of religion on social media -- "SPOILER ALERT: apparently the earth is not 6000 years old... Who knew!?" tweeted JaclynGlenn -- in general, people were impressed.